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reMarkable 2 notes

2021-03-13 21:50 PST

I bought a reMarkable 2 tablet because I wanted a tablet for two specific tasks:

1. Reading papers and PDFs on; these are primarily science, math, and tech-related, so I wanted something that was larger than a Kindle.

2. I wanted to be able to work on math problems on it without wasting a ton of paper.

For comparison, I had the Sony Digital Paper DPT-CP1; my biggest complaint was that the pen constantly needed charging and was always dead when I wanted to write with it. The rm2 pen doesn't need charging.

reMarkable 2 store

Well it showed up on Wednesday; I've had an opportunity to use it for a bit and wrote up a few notes on how it's working out.

First hour

Probably covered in the intro, but it took me a minute to figure out how to delete a page in the notes.
Email (using OCR) works but only sent one page.
It went to sleep (I guess it locked) but there wasn't a lock screen - at first I couldn't figure out why it wasn't responding to my input. Update: it turns out it just locks the display after 20 minutes of inactivity. Actually sleeping has a lock screen.
There's sometimes a little lage when writing. The pen is new and maybe needs breaking in.
I can't figure out how to change the default pen. The internet suggests this isn't possible.
The desktop app is Windows/Mac only. I haven't tried it in Wine yet.
The desktop app can be slow to show a file is queued for upload, making me question whether it's queued for upload or not.
Reading docs is comparable speed/ease-wise with the Kindle.
Writing by this point seems a lot smoother - maybe the nib just needed breaking in. The writing surface feels okay.
The eraser (on the marker+) is really nice.
Links in docs don't seem to work, like with indices / tables of contents.
The book folio & pen attach with magnets. Seems to work okay.

First day

The desktop UI doesn't let you transfer folders: you have to create folders, then copy files.
Document transfer sometimes silently fails with no indication why.
No "sync" folders (the digital paper app had this) where notes and/or docs aren't kept in sync.
You can't set a global text style like on the Kindle. You have to set font size, line spacing, and margins for each ePub *before making any annotations*.
You can't highlight text, only draw highlighting over text.
There's no table of contents. Or bookmarks. Update: I found the table of contents: it's in the page overview.
Reading and writing is otherwise nice.

Conclusion

So far I really like it. It works out well for reading, writing, and arithmetic (working maths problems). I got a clip on book light for reading at night that makes up for the lack of a backlight. It's about the same size as my Digital Paper, and I guess time will tell if there's any major hangups.